Chapter 166: Prisoners

The wind went around to the east on Tuesday morning, and Tamar came up from the harbor at six o'clock to say so.

"Fair for Kethra," he said, standing in Helena's kitchen doorway with his hat in his hands and his bad ankle on the step. "Steady. Three days of it, if the almanac's right, and it usually is. If they're going, they should go today."

My father put down his cup.

"Then they'll go today," he said.

* * *

He'd promised them. On the threshold at Harl, with every captain's sword handed back across his hands. Go home. Every man aboard the twelve blue ships, sent back to Kethra in his own ship, with his own sails, and food for the voyage, and nobody hanged or chained or sworn to anything.

The twelve ships had come around from Harl to Westmere at the end of last week, when the ice was gone, and anchored in the outer harbor in a long blue line. The two hundred soldiers from the walls of Harl had come with them, and had spent most of a week in the old net lofts on the north quay, sleeping on piles of sailcloth, eating Helena's bread, and being looked at very curiously by the whole of Westmere.

Now the wind was fair. Helena had been baking since three. There were sacks of bread and barrels of water and cheeses and salt fish stacked along the north quay, enough for twelve ships for a week.

"I'll tell them," said my father, and stood up.

* * *

I went with him. So did Iselle, to translate, with Roderic's permission, which she'd asked for and he'd given with very bad grace. Brannoc came too, because Brannoc comes.

The two hundred were already out on the quay when we got there. Sitting on bollards and coils of rope and the edges of the net lofts, in their shirtsleeves, in the gray early light. Looking at the blue ships in the outer harbor. Looking at the sacks of bread.

Not one of them was moving toward the boats.

* * *

My father stopped at the end of the quay and looked at them for a long moment.

"The wind's fair," he said. Iselle translated. "Three days of it. The ships are victualed. The boats are waiting." He paused. "You can go home."

Nobody moved.

They looked at him. Two hundred faces, most of them young, most of them sunburned and windburned and very tired. They looked at each other. Somebody near the back said something, very low, and somebody else hushed him.

And then the archer stood up.

* * *

I knew him straight away. The bad shot. The boy Grenna had caught on the steps at Harl, whose arm my mother had healed on Monday evening while he cried into his other hand. He was about nineteen. Tall and thin and sandy-haired, with big raw farmer's hands and a face that went red very easily. He went red now, standing up in front of two hundred men and the King of Greykeep.

"Teague Pelham," he said in Kethran. Then, very carefully, in Avarran, a word at a time: "From Coln. The bee villages." He swallowed. "Sir. We can't."

* * *

My father looked at him.

"Can't what?" he said.

Teague Pelham looked back at the two hundred behind him. Then he looked at Iselle, as if he'd rather say it in Kethran and have it come out of somebody else's mouth.

Iselle nodded.

He said it in Kethran. Fast, all at once, the way you say a thing you've been holding in your mouth for a week. And Iselle translated it, a sentence behind him, in her low even voice, and her face got stiller and stiller as she went.

* * *

"We're not soldiers," said Teague Pelham. "None of us. We're farmers. Every one of us on that wall. They came to the bee villages two years ago with the hand on their banners and said the Regent needed one son from every house. Every house. If you had one son, they took him. If you had three, they took the oldest, and told you they'd be back for the next one if the first one didn't serve well."

He looked down at his big raw hands.

"I've never held a bow in my life before the island," he said. "I keep bees. My father keeps bees. That's all we've ever done. They gave me a bow and put me on a wall and told me to shoot at anyone who came through the gate." He went red again. "I'm a very bad shot."

"I know," I said. "I was there."

A few of the two hundred laughed. Not much. Just a little. Teague Pelham looked at me, startled, and then a little bit of the red went out of his face.

* * *

"And if you go home?" said my father quietly.

Teague Pelham stopped smiling.

"The priests are at the quays," he said. "In every port in Kethra. When a ship comes in, they meet it. They count the men who come off. They ask if the ship won." He swallowed. "We didn't win. We lost an island to a king who gave us our swords back and told us to go home. They'll say we were made weak. They'll say the enemy put something in us. That's what they always say." He looked at the blue ships in the harbor. "They'll take us off the ships one at a time. And they'll take us down a stair. And they'll give us the Great Oath."

Nobody on the quay said anything.

"And then we'll be like the ones on the island," said Teague Pelham. "In the towers. In rows. With our hands out." He looked at the ground. "And my father won't know my face."

* * *

I looked at my father.

He was standing very still at the end of the quay. Not the way he goes still when he's angry. The other way. The way he goes still when something he believed has just turned over in his hands and shown him its underside.

"I promised you'd go home," he said at last. Very quietly. "I promised nobody would be sworn."

"Yes, sir," said Teague Pelham. "You did. And you meant it. We all saw." He looked up at my father. "But home is where they swear us."

* * *

My father didn't say anything for a long time.

The wind blew steadily from the east, fair for Kethra. Out in the harbor, the blue ships swung at their anchors, the way ships do when the wind wants them to go somewhere. On the quay, two hundred farm boys sat on bollards and coils of rope and looked at the sacks of bread meant for a voyage they couldn't take.

"Then you'll stay," said my father. "Here. All of you. As long as you need."

* * *

It was the right thing. I knew it was the right thing. It was the kind of thing my father always says, and means, and makes true by saying it.

And Teague Pelham's face crumpled.

"Sir," he said. "Sir, we can't do that either."

* * *

He turned around and looked at the two hundred. Then back at my father.

"My brother's fourteen," he said. "Tobyn. He's the next one. If I don't come home, they'll come back for Tobyn. That's what they said. If the first one doesn't serve well." He swallowed. "If I stay here, I'm safe. And Tobyn gets taken instead."

Behind him, somebody said something in Kethran. Then somebody else. Then a lot of voices, all at once, low and quick, overlapping.

Iselle was translating as fast as she could. Her voice was shaking now.

"He has two younger brothers. He has a little sister and they take girls for the kitchens. He has a mother on her own. He has a wife. He has a son of three. He has—"

She stopped. She couldn't keep up.

* * *

My father stood on the end of the quay with his hands at his sides.

I'd never seen him not know what to do. Not once in my whole life. Not on the north pier with the wall of the sea standing up in front of him. Not on the threshold at Harl with the sea leaning on his hands. He always knows. He's always known.

He didn't know now.

If they went home, they'd be sworn. If they stayed, their brothers would be taken in their place. There wasn't a right thing. There was only a choice between two wrong ones, and two hundred people waiting for him to make it.

And I thought: he shouldn't have to.

* * *

I don't know where it came from. Maybe from a week of carrying water. Maybe from watching my mother hold out her hand on her knee a hundred and eighty-four times and say May I? Maybe from watching Faelan ask a frozen boy three questions on a dune. Maybe from Adriana, on the sand, saying I'm the no.

But I stepped forward. Beside my father. On his left, where I always stand.

"It isn't yours to decide," I said.

* * *

My father turned his head and looked at me.

"Not you," I said. "Not anybody. It's theirs." I looked at the two hundred on the quay. "Each one of them. Their own. Their brother, their mother, their son. They're the only ones who know what it weighs." I swallowed. "You can't make it for them, Father. If you send them home, you've decided for them. If you keep them here, you've decided for them. Either way, it's just another hand closing."

* * *

My father looked at me for a long time.

Then something changed in his face. Not much. Just a little. The way the frost goes off a window when the sun gets to it.

"Then what do we do?" he said.

"We ask," I said.

* * *

So we asked.

It took all morning. Sigrun came down from the harbor office with her ledger, the one with every name and village and smell the wolves had ever found. Mary came with her, with a second ledger, a new one, green, the color of the ivy on the east wall. Faelan came behind Mary, uninvited, with his laundry book under his arm, and nobody had the heart to send him away.

We set up two tables at the end of the north quay. And one at a time, every one of the two hundred came up to the tables, and sat down, and we asked.

What is your name?

Where is home?

What do you want?

* * *

Not where do you want to go. Not stay or leave. Just: what do you want? And let them tell it however they could.

Most of them had never been asked. You could see it on their faces when Iselle put the question to them. A sort of blankness. Not like the Hushed. Something more ordinary than that, and in a way sadder. The blankness of somebody who has simply never once in his life been asked what he wanted, and has to go looking for the answer, like a man looking for a coat in a dark cupboard.

* * *

Some of them knew straight away.

"Home," said a broad red-faced boy from Tessing. "My mother's on her own. My father died last winter. If I don't go home there's no one to get the barley in. I'll take the oath if they make me. At least she'll have somebody standing in the yard, even if he doesn't know her." He wiped his face with the back of his hand. "I'll take that."

Mary wrote it down.

"Stay," said a quiet dark boy from Corth, the spire pastures, where Tam Corth had come from. "I've nobody. They took my brother first. He's on the island. He was in the second tower. Sigrun found him on Saturday." He looked over at the harbor office, where a man was sitting on the step in the sun with a blanket around his shoulders. "I want to stay with him."

Mary wrote it down.

* * *

And some of them didn't know at all.

Teague Pelham sat at the table for a very long time.

"I want to go home," he said at last, in Kethran, very quietly. "I want to see my father. I want to keep bees. I want my brother not to be taken." He looked down at his hands. "I can't have all of those. Can I."

"No," said my father, standing behind the table. Iselle translated. "Not today."

Teague Pelham nodded slowly.

"Then I want Tobyn not to be taken," he said. "That's the one. If I have to pick." He looked up. "So I have to go home."

My father looked at him for a long time.

"Wait," he said.

* * *

He went down the quay to where Grenna was sitting on a bollard in the sun, on two legs, very small and very old, with her blackthorn stick across her knees and the smooth scar band at her throat. She'd come in the night before from the North Sands to see how the soldiers were getting on, because Grenna likes to know.

My father crouched down in front of her.

They spoke for a long time. Quietly. I couldn't hear. At one point Grenna looked over at the table, at Teague Pelham, the boy she'd caught on the steps at Harl. At one point she laughed, a short dry bark. And at the end, she put her hand on my father's shoulder and said something, and he nodded.

Then he came back up the quay to the table.

* * *

"Teague Pelham," said my father. "The bee villages on the Coln."

"Yes, sir."

"How far inland?"

Teague thought about it. "Three days from the coast. On foot. Two on a horse."

"And the priests. When they come for the next son. How long do they wait?"

"A season," said Teague. "They come back at the harvest. They always come at the harvest. That's when there's food to feed the ones they take."

My father nodded.

"Then you have till harvest," he said. "Stay here. Keep bees, if you like. Ask Helena; she'll find you some. And before the harvest, the wolves are going to go to the bee villages on the Coln." He paused. "Not to fight. To smell. To find the houses where somebody's son has been taken. To find out who's next." He looked down at Teague Pelham. "And when the war starts, and it will, I'm going to ask them to go and knock on those doors. Before the priests do."

Teague Pelham stared at him.

"Grenna says they'd like to be asked," said my father. "She said that weeks ago. I've been saving it."

* * *

It wasn't a promise. Not really. Nobody knew when the war would start, or how, or whether the wolves would get there in time. My father didn't pretend it was. He said so, to every one of them who heard it, one at a time, all down the table. It isn't a promise. It's a plan. You can still go home if you'd rather. Nobody will stop you.

By noon, Mary's new green book had two hundred names in it.

Sixty-one of them had written home.

A hundred and thirty-nine had written stay. And under it, most of them, the name of somebody in a village in Kethra who'd be next.

* * *

My mother went back to Hand-Captain Corvane at noon.

I carried the bucket. Brannoc opened the door. Corvane was sitting on the cot exactly as we'd left him the night before, very straight, in his long blue coat, with the black hand in his lap. It was worse than it had been. The black had crept past the wrist. He hadn't slept. You could see that too.

My mother sat down on the stool inside the door and held out her hand, palm up, on her knee. Open.

"May I?" she said.

Corvane looked at her hand. Then, for a long time, at me.

"The water-carrier," he said in Kethran. "This morning. On the quay. You told the ice-god it wasn't his to decide. The boys' going home." He paused. "I heard. The window is open."

"Yes," I said.

"In Kethra," said Corvane, "nobody tells the king it isn't his to decide."

"I know," I said. "You told me. Princes don't carry water either."

* * *

Corvane closed his eyes.

Then he held out his black hand. Not all the way. A little. Toward my mother's open one, on her knee. And let it rest there, palm down, on top of hers.

"Yes," he said.

* * *

My mother saved the hand.

Not all of it. The two smallest fingers were too far gone; they'd been black for two days, and there was nothing left in them to heal. But the rest came back, slowly, under the light. The black went out of it like ink out of a cloth in water. The swelling went down. And when my mother finally sat back on the stool, Hand-Captain Corvane was looking at a left hand with a thumb and two fingers and two stumps, pink and new and shaking.

"Will I hold a sword again?" he said.

"You'll hold a cup," said my mother. "Start with that."

* * *

Seraphina brought our son down to the quay in the afternoon, to see the ships.

Little Uriah is just over a year old. He has Seraphina's dark hair and my chin and, according to my mother, my father's habit of looking at a person as if he's deciding whether to let them stay. He has his mother's fire and, according to Aurelia, all of mine as well, and he will be stronger than either of us one day, which is a thing I try not to think about at three in the morning. Mostly what he does is say Up and Jam and Da, and point at things.

He pointed at Teague Pelham.

Teague was sitting on a bollard at the end of the quay, alone, looking at the blue ships getting ready to sail. Sixty-one men were going home on them. He wasn't one. My son looked at him for a long time from Seraphina's hip, with that look of my father's. And then he held out both his arms, toward Teague Pelham, and said, very firmly:

"Up."

* * *

Teague Pelham looked at him. Then at Seraphina. Then at me.

"He wants you to pick him up," I said. In Kethran. Badly.

"Me?"

"You," said Seraphina. "You can say no. He's very heavy."

Teague Pelham stood up off the bollard, slowly. He wiped his big raw farmer's hands on his trousers. And he held them out, and Seraphina put my son into them, and Teague Pelham held him against his chest the way you hold something you know how to hold.

My son put his hand flat on Teague's cheek. And left it there.

* * *

"My Tobyn," said Teague Pelham, after a long time, in Kethran. Very quietly. Not to anybody. "He used to do that. When he was this big. Put his hand on your face, like he was checking you were still there."

He didn't cry. I think he'd cried all he had on Monday evening, in the lower court, with my mother's light in his arm. He just stood there at the end of the quay, holding my son, looking out at the blue ships getting ready to go home without him, with a small hand on his face.

"That's my son," I said. "Uriah. After my father."

Teague Pelham looked down at him.

"He's very heavy," he said.

"He is," said Seraphina. "Would you like to hold him a bit longer? I could do with a sit-down."

* * *

The blue ships sailed on the evening tide. Eleven of them. The twelfth, Corvane's, with the gilded stern, stayed swinging at its anchor in the outer harbor, with nobody on it but a harbor watchman from Westmere, because nobody had decided yet what to do with it, or with him.

Sixty-one farm boys from Kethra went home on the eleven. And the crews. And all of Helena's bread.

We stood on the end of the north pier and watched them go. My father, and me, and Grenna on her stick. And Teague Pelham, still holding my son, who'd fallen asleep on his shoulder an hour ago with one fist in Teague's collar, and whom nobody had had the heart to take back.

"They'll be sworn," said Teague quietly. "Some of them. When they get off."

"I know," said my father.

"They chose it."

"I know," said my father. "That's the only thing that makes it bearable."

* * *

Mary's book. Tuesday. Written in Westmere's harbor office, in the new green book, the color of the ivy on the east wall, which now has two hundred names in it in three different hands: Mary's, Sigrun's, and, at the end, in pencil, very large, Faelan's.

6 a.m. Tamar says the wind is fair for Kethra. Three days.

Uriah told the 200 soldiers from Harl they could go home. Nobody moved.

Teague Pelham from the bee villages on the Coln. The archer who missed. He says they aren't soldiers. They're farmers. One son from every house. If you don't serve well, they come for the next.

The priests meet every ship at every quay in Kethra. If the ship didn't win, they take the men down a stair and give them the Great Oath. He says home is where they swear us.

Uriah said then stay. Teague said we can't. If I stay, they take my brother Tobyn. He's fourteen.

Uriah didn't know what to do. Garrick said it isn't yours to decide. It's theirs. Either way it's just another hand closing. Uriah said then what do we do. Garrick said we ask.

Two tables on the north quay. Three questions. What is your name. Where is home. What do you want.

61 home. 139 stay. Most of the 139 wrote the name of who'd be next.

Uriah asked Grenna. Before harvest the wolves will go to the villages and smell which houses lost a son and who's next. When the war starts he'll ask them to knock first. Before the priests. He says it isn't a promise. It's a plan.

Teague said I want Tobyn not to be taken. He's staying.

Noon. Corvane said yes. Evelyn saved his hand. Not the two smallest fingers. He asked if he'll hold a sword. She said you'll hold a cup.

Afternoon. Seraphina brought little Uriah to the quay. He said Up to Teague. Teague held him. He put his hand on Teague's face. Teague said his Tobyn used to do that.

Evening. Eleven ships sailed. 61 went home. Corvane's ship stayed.

And under that, in big careful farmer's letters, Kethran script, pressed hard, with one smudge where a small hand had grabbed the pencil halfway through and been gently persuaded to let go:

Teague Pelham, of the bee villages on the Coln. I'd like it noted that nobody ever asked me what I wanted before. And that I said Tobyn. And that the little one is very heavy, and fell asleep on me, and nobody took him back for an hour, and I didn't want them to.